Walking and Falling with the Velveteen Rabbi

I love this! The whole post by the Velveteen Rabbi is lovely:

Like Laurie Anderson says:

You're walking. And you don't always realize it,
but you're always falling.
With each step you fall forward slightly.
And then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you're falling.
And then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how you can be walking and falling
at the same time.

Facing our own violence

I'm reading Frances M. Young's book Brokenness and Blessing: Towards a Biblical Spirituality as a part of my Lenten reading and I'm really struck by these words of Youakim Moubarac connecting the experience of working in L'Arche and the desert fathers:

In as far as I understand Jean Vanier, daily dealings with people who have handicaps makes those involved face their own violence. Confronted by the irreducibility of the other, the one whom they mean to serve but whose condition they cannot ameliorate, they discover with horror that they are capable of striking them, or even wanting to do away with them. It is this, then, that I call a privileged desert place. The ancient anchorites took themselves off to the desert, they said, to fight with Satan on his own territory. We know now that is is enough to pay attention to the most defenceless people among us to find ourselves given up to our interior demons. But if only we force ourselves not to lose heart, if only graces comes to the aid of our weakness, we apprehend that to spend time with the poorest of all is not to do them charity, but to allow ourselves to be transformed by them and to apprehend God as gentleness.

Young relates this to her own experience of caring for her disabled son. I'm finding the book engaging and challenging and look forward to reading more.

Christ is Risen!

In the letters Paul wrote, there are fifty-three references to the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is the even that sets and keeps in motion the entire gospel enterprise. Most of these resurrection texts assert either the centrality of Jesus' resurrection or the certainty of our final resurrection from the dead, or both. But six of these resurrection citations explicitly identify our present and ongoing spiritual formation with Jesus' resurrection (see Romans 6:4; 8:11; Ephesians 2:6; Philippians 3:10; Colossians 2:12; 3:1). In other words, this is not a future resurrection but a present resurrection -- which is what we're interested in right now.

Clearly, Paul's witness is that resurrection is not only a doctrinal/historical truth to be believed about Jesus, and not only a doctrinal/eschatological truth to be believed about our final destiny, but also the focus for our spiritual formation -- formation-by-resurrection.

From Eugene Peterson's Living the Resurrection, p. 102

Discovering our spiritual type

Last weekend our student chaplains and I went on retreat. We went to the Martha Retreat Centre for some time apart to get to know each other and to do some planning. Part of what we did was work with some material from Corinne Ware's book Discover Your Spiritual Type. Ware develops a questionnaire on spiritual preferences using the classic spiritual typology developed by Anglican theologian, Urban Holmes.

The diagram is my rather pathetic attempt to use the paint programme to draw the typology. The horizontal axis is about whether you know things through your head (speculative - ideas) or through your heart (affective - emotions). The vertical horizon is whether you are drawn to the ways in which God is revealed (kataphatic) or to the ways in which God is mystery (apophatic).

If you are head/kataphatic inclined your spirituality is more centred on the head - doctrine, theology, sermons etc. If you are heart/kataphatic then you are more centred on the heart - feelings, experience, heart felt faith etc. If you are heart/apophatic you are more drawn to the mystical, the spiritual journey (journey is a big word for you), and aren't concerned too much about colouring inside the lines. If you are head/apophatic you are more drawn to a spirituality of the hands, service, embodied spirituality. Ware is interested in what happens when there are differences between the spirituality of a congregation and an individual (particularly that of clergy - this is an Alban Institute publication). Ideally people move to an integrated spirituality and Holmes suggests that it is helpful to try to find balance by moving to the opposite. And this I think is true of groups as well as individuals.

The four of us represented all four types and had an interesting discussion about what moves us and why. Part of it is personality but part of it is also experience. I used to come out heart centred which I think was the balancing of my work life which is so centred on the head. But after more than a decade of ministry I find myself more and more drawn to the mystery of God.

I did a service once where I choice hymns from each of these types, a heavy theological hymn, an old emotional revival hymn about personal experience, a simple chant and a hymn about service and talked about Holmes typology in my sermon. I think my parish is heart and hand centred for the most part and people are pretty generous about differences so we don't tend to have worship wars. But I did think that it was helpful to be aware that different things feed the souls of other people. I've come to realize that if I preach a really idea centred sermon that people don't really get into it. The ideas have to be connected in strong ways to experience.

I think with the chaplaincy that we are aware that we need to offer different ways for people to connect that reflect these kinds of differences in spiritual preferences and so we're glad we understand all four of them between us. I'm excited to see what the year is going to bring and to see how these gifted young women will grow in their ministries.